SPCFC V: Original Soundtrack
by AVAAntares
Summary: Sephiroth and his squad of silver haired subordinates plan a frontal assault, but the SPCFC is still reeling from the last clash. Herein lies a thrilling tale of blackmail, abduction, betrayal, manipulation... and more music than Doujima can stand!
1. Prologue: Carrot and Stick

  
Welcome to the fifth chronological installment of the Adventures of the SPCFC! If you're joining us for the first time, I would recommend starting with SPCFC II, III, and/or SPCFC Origins. They can be found by visiting my profile. 

Once again, Melchior is holding SPCFC I and SPCFC IV hostage; if you'd like to know what you're missing, contact me and I'll see if I can give you a summary.

And now, without further fanfare, AVAAntares presents...

**  
SPCFC V: ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK  
**

PROLOGUE  
"Carrot and Stick" -- Imahori Tsuneo

Enishi stretched his long legs before him, feeling the pull of tense muscles through his back and shoulders. Their last mission had been more physically taxing than he would have liked to admit, and things had been so close at the end that he'd briefly had to rely on Nerves of Insanity. His ultimate technique put a strain on him even under the best of circumstances, but he felt it more acutely at times like this, when he was so horribly out of practice. He'd gotten soft, working with Sephiroth and his team. Enishi sighed and tipped his head to rest against the back of the couch. He hadn't really fought in earnest since his duel with Himura...

There it was again. Enishi hated this sedentary waiting period between missions. The inactivity gave him time to think, to dwell on things he'd rather remained in the dark recesses of his memory. The old, familiar emotions rushed over him, and Enishi closed his eyes. As always, his sister's face was faint, but he could still make it out in the darkness behind his eyelids.

Perhaps, when all of this was over, they'd be together again. Enishi hardly dared to hope that Sephiroth would keep his word. Their leader made so many casual promises, he knew it would be impossible to keep them all. Still, Enishi had been with him since the beginning, and had seen Sephiroth do so many impossible things. There was always a chance, no matter how faint. And, all loyalties aside, it was the only thing Enishi had left to hold on to.

That wasn't necessarily the case with the rest of the crew, he considered, raising his head to glance around the room. There was the mage, Vanduri, whom Sephiroth had recruited during one of their trips into the realm of the Authors. He'd found the wizard in one of the texts he was editing, and with a couple of quick alterations, had freed the mage and given him a sense of unwavering loyalty. Sephiroth hadn't had to lure Vanduri with promises; his obedience was assured as part of his character traits.

There was the child, Dilandau, who was so insane -- and, at times, so enamored of Sephiroth -- that there was no need to sway his allegiance. As long as Sephiroth allowed him to burn things, and smiled at the right moments, the child would do anything his master asked.

There was also Vicious -- slouched in a chair, sword resting against his shoulder, glowering as usual. Enishi wasn't sure of the details, but it seemed that Sephiroth had promised him some woman after they achieved their goals. Another carrot, like the one that had been dangled before Enishi's nose, but apparently it was enough to motivate him.

There were others, as well. Ignacio Desoto, the Spaniard, sat at the table with Vergil, the mystical swordsman. Another new member leaned against the wall in the opposite corner, holding a book near his face, but the reflections on his large, round glasses obscured his features from Enishi's view. The past few weeks had been dotted with recruiting missions into various worlds, and their ranks had multiplied accordingly. It seemed as though Sephiroth were preparing for something big, and wanted to beef up his troops before the engagement.

The door opened, admitting a couple of the newest recruits. One, Enishi knew to be a fellow member of the Hong Kong underworld -- though separated by a century and a half and a few alternate universes. The other man had a similar build and appearance, but spoke with a pronounced accent. As Enishi recalled, he had been picked up after an embarrassing incident with a Chinese chef and a news reporter in Australia. They were engaged in an animated discussion, and seemed to be making no attempt at concealing the topic of conversation.

"All I'm saying," the Australian man said loudly, "is that when I worked for Jean Carlo, we got paid plenty regular. And we knew how much we were gettin' paid, and for what. This Sephiroth guy don' give us no answers. I like to know in advance. How do we know when the cash is comin', and what we have to do to get it?"

The Hong Kong man nodded in agreement, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Why are we taking orders from him, anyway? The way I see it, even if he is the brains of this operation, we don't need him. We got ourselves enough muscle to take over any town we want. We could live like kings, with this bunch."

The Australian man turned to the nearest person, who happened to be Vanduri, and made his pitch. "What do you say, Merlin? You think we need Mr. Leather Pants in this outfit, or could we do okay on our own?"

Vanduri bristled at the implication that he would betray his sworn master. "You are speaking of treason," he growled, drawing himself up to his full -- and rather impressive -- height, "and if you value your lives, you will abandon these treacherous plans at once!"

The Aussie shrugged. "Touchy, touchy," he muttered, and turned to Enishi, still stretched out on the couch. "What about you, pal? You wanna make a go of it? We could have any city in the world."

Enishi massaged his eyes with his fingertips, suddenly feeling drained. "And this," he said, sighing heavily, "is why the muscle isn't paid to think." He raised his eyes to glare at the enterprising thugs. "You know, I used to run the largest syndicate in China, and from time to time, some of my boys would get bright ideas like this. And do you know what I found?" Enishi reached over and fingered the tassel on the hilt of his sword for emphasis. "I found that it was a lot faster and easier just to kill them and train new help, rather than try to explain to their rice-sized brains why their plan wouldn't work."

The Aussie and the Hong Kong man exchanged infuriated glances and shifted into a more aggressive stance. Enishi reluctantly tensed his sore muscles, knowing these two weren't worth the effort. Still, he prepared for the headlong rush he knew was coming. It wouldn't do for one of them to score a hit while the rest of the group was watching. Seniority wasn't everything; he _did_ have to protect his image, after all.

His effort proved unnecessary. Before the thugs could charge forward, a long shadow fell across them from the doorway. Enishi marveled at how Sephiroth could manipulate everything -- even the light from the hallway -- to give him the advantage in a situation. It went far beyond charisma, or even vanity. It was just... a presence.

"My, my... and what transpires here?" Sephiroth's smooth baritone purr seemed to silence all other sounds in the room, and even the shadowy figure in the corner looked up from his book and adjusted his glasses. "You two couldn't possibly be entertaining thoughts of treason, after I magnanimously freed you from your mediocre supporting roles as recyclable punching bags." Sephiroth's angelic smile was countered by the unholy light gleaming in his eyes.

The two men turned in slow motion, visibly shaking in the presence of the leader they'd attempted to snub. "N-no, boss," one of them stammered. "We... we were just wondering, you know, about being paid on time..."

Sephiroth shrugged. "As I told you before, I pay when the job is done," he said smoothly. "But as I now know that you can't be trusted, I'm afraid you'll never have the opportunity to earn it." In an instant, the two were consumed in a flash of white-hot flame. Enishi squinted against the sudden blast of heat, and when his eyes opened again, he saw only ashes drifting down into an untidy pile where the men had been standing.

Sephiroth sighed and brushed some of the feathery dust off the skirt of his long black coat. "It _is_ hard to find good help these days," he lamented dryly, making every person in the room wonder whether the words were meant for him. Sephiroth glanced up, his eyes meeting Enishi's across the room. Enishi quickly straightened under his leader's piercing gaze, but Sephiroth's eyes had faded to their typical aquamarine glow. The glance was accompanied by a lazy smile, and Enishi relaxed a bit. Apparently the two thugs had sated Sephiroth's homicidal streak for the moment.

"Enishi," Sephiroth said, his tone approaching conversational, "I want you to retrieve something for me." He turned to go without waiting for a response, knowing that Enishi would follow him. At the door, he paused to glance back at the mound of ashes. "Oh, and... someone should clean up this mess."

Enishi stood without a moment's hesitation and picked up his sword. Apparently he had earned his leader's confidence. And he would continue to do so, for as long as he was able -- not only because of the promised reunion with his sister, but...

For every carrot, he reminded himself, there was also a stick. He stepped past Vanduri, who was scooping ash carefully into a dust pan, and followed Sephiroth down the hall.


	2. Chapter I: Blue Blooms the Gentian

CHAPTER I  
"Blue Blooms The Gentian" -- Heino

Doujima crouched just below the crest of the too-green hill, peering cautiously through a stand of white flowers. She glanced back over her shoulder and gave a low wave to indicate that the man behind her should follow her lead. He slithered forward in the grass on his stomach. _A little unpracticed,_ Doujima thought, _but not bad for his first time out._ He was a little older than the SPCFC's typical recruits -- nearly twice Doujima's age, which to her meant bordering on decrepit -- but he moved with the unconscious grace and strength of a dancer. He was pleasantly handsome, and had a face that could blend easily into the setting of almost any world. Doujima could see why the Directors had chosen him as Alfred's replacement. All he needed was a little polishing and training, and that's what she had been instructed to give him.

There wasn't much danger in this world, but as she was setting an example for the new recruit Doujima wanted to play it as safe as possible. New operatives were cocky and incautious enough without her contributing any of her characteristic recklessness.

"Miss Doujima," the new recruit whispered, a trifle loud. He was scanning the horizon intently. "What exactly are we looking for?"

She gave him a lopsided grin for his enthusiasm. "Nothing in particular. It's just always safer to be aware of your surroundings. See there?" Doujima pointed to a spot several hilltops distant, where there was a flash of motion. He followed her gesture and squinted at the dark spot in the grass. After a few seconds of closer examination, the shape resolved into the figure of a woman wearing a long dress. 

"What about her? Is she an enemy?" The man asked, rising on his elbows to peer over the top of the flowers. Doujima rolled her eyes and jerked his head back down to the level of her own.

"No, she isn't. And keep your head down," she muttered reprovingly. "Never give them a bigger target to shoot at."

The man raised his fine, dark eyebrows. "She's going to shoot at us?"

Doujima had to chuckle. "No," she told him. Most recruits at this stage were still struggling with basic concepts, so she tried to choose small, non-technical terms to explain. "That woman lives here. She's a character from this world. She's probably totally harmless to us as individuals, but it can still be very dangerous for her to see us. If we meddle too much with the worlds we visit, it can affect the characters or interfere with the plot. In the worst case scenario, it could even cause the world to be unstable or fall apart."

The new recruit thought for a moment, then nodded. "Got it. So it would be like making a film set in the seventeenth century, and all of a sudden a character comes in driving a Studebaker instead of a carriage. The story would lose all credibility, and the movie would flop." 

Doujima stared for a moment, surprised at his clear understanding. "That's an excellent metaphor, Mr. Lockwood," she said, truly impressed. "How did you happen to come up with that?"

The man smiled, showing perfectly even white teeth. "I used to be an actor," he said. "Well, I was a lot of things -- stunt man, Vaudeville ham, song and dance man -- but mostly an actor. And please, call me Don. Only the reporters from Variety ever call me Mr. Lockwood."

The woman in the long dress had moved closer to their hiding place, and Doujima ducked low to the ground as she saw her crest the next hill. Don followed her lead, and they silently squirmed back a few paces to stay out of sight. They could see now that the woman had short golden hair, and was carrying a basket over one arm. Now and again she would bend to pick a particularly lovely flower and arrange it in the basket, then spin in a graceful circle, arms out, and move on to the next rolling hill.

Doujima and Don watched this peculiar behavior for a few moments more, and when the blonde woman was safely out of earshot, Don revisited his earlier question. "So why are we here, exactly?"

Doujima sighed. "You know why the SPCFC exists," she began, and he nodded. "We right wrongs, correct plots, replace characters, and so on. Not because it benefits us, but because it needs to be done."

"We're the guys in the white hats," Don suggested pleasantly.

Doujima smiled. "If you like," she agreed. "But apparently there's another group of people out there who -- well, we don't know what color hats they wear, but we're pretty sure they're not white. They like to change things around for their own purpose, whatever that may be. They seem to enjoy causing trouble, and they have sufficiently advanced technology to do so without us being able to interfere."

"Sounds troublesome."

"More than that, it's dangerous. They've not only been interfering with the storylines, but they've targeted several of our agents, and once they actually broke into our headquarters and abducted a character, then burned down part of our building. It's escalating into a full-out war, and we don't even know our enemy's identity."

Don let out a low whistle. "That sounds very nasty," he agreed. "But what has it to do with this place?"

Doujima gestured around them to encompass the intense blue sky, the bright green hills, the picturesque mountains, the brilliantly white flowers. "We're not usually able to track them when they visit a world," she explained, "but a day or so ago in this world's timeline, there was some kind of unusual disturbance. It seems that a small group of them arrived, stayed for a few minutes, and then left again. It's possible they left something here, perhaps even one of their own operatives. We can't find anything in the canon that would correspond to this new signal, so the Director sent us down to check it out. Basically, we're looking for anything out of the ordinary..." 

She paused, because something she considered quite out of the ordinary began to happen. A sound built around them, starting off low and distant, then swelling into a blinding crescendo of music that shook the very grass they lay in. The woman with the basket of flowers suddenly appeared on the hilltop, a few feet from them, and opened her mouth...

_The hills are alive,_ she sang, _with the sound of music..._

Doujima clapped her hands over her ears to shut out the sound and all but ran down the hill. Don, startled at her reaction, followed her at a brisk jog. When they had reached a distance at which normal conversation was possible, she took her hands from her ears and tried to catch her breath.

Don came up beside her. "What's wrong?" he asked with sincere concern.

She shook her head. "It gets me every time," she muttered. "You can never be prepared for that."

Don blinked at her. "Prepared for what?"

Doujima just stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. Then understanding smoothed the confusion from her face. "You came from a musical world, didn't you. I should have known."

"We had music, if that's what you mean," he said with a shrug. "We sang quite a bit, too. And danced. That's what I do, you know, song and dance..."

Doujima interrupted him with a nod. "It's all right. It just startled me. Where I'm from, there's not a whole lot of, um, spontaneous singing and dancing. None at all, actually." 

Don looked stricken. "No singing at all? Oh, how tragic. I'm so sorry..." he began, but she cut him off again.

"I said it's all right. In the meantime, we need to be looking for anything out of the ordinary here."

They heard another sound -- something like a key change, perhaps -- and Doujima turned to see the young woman with the basket kneeling beside a bunch of white flowers.

_Edelweiss,_ she crooned, _Edelweiss..._

Don was listening with a smile on his face, obviously enjoying the lilting melody. Doujima suppressed a shudder and scanned the other hilltops for something to divert her attention until the musical moment was over. She saw nothing but green hills, purple mountains, and an unending sea of white flowers. Edelweiss, indeed... Only one one slope was there was anything of a different color. Amid the waving white blossoms, she spotted a cluster of tiny bluish-violet blooms competing for the sunlight. _Banzai for nonconformity,_ she thought, grinning wryly at the blue flowers. 

Beside her, Don's face tightened, and he gripped her arm suddenly. "Do you hear that?" he asked in a harsh whisper. 

Doujima strained her ears, but all she could hear was _Edelweiss, Edelweiss._ She shook her head. "What is it?" 

"It's something different," he murmured. "A different song, I think. But it's all wrong. Wrong key, wrong tempo. Wrong voice."

Doujima listened again, and this time she heard something just faintly discordant... She whirled and searched the area around them, the new melody growing with every second. _Something different, something different..._ She turned to where she'd seen the bunch of blue flowers growing on the hill, and jumped back in surprise as another figure appeared on the green slope.

"There!" she shouted, not caring if she drew the attention of the resident characters. She took off for the blond figure, who -- she was reasonably certain -- did NOT belong in this setting.

The man was tall and angular. His bright yellow hair swept back from his square, stern-looking face in a garish pompadour, and his eyes were concealed behind dark glasses. He wore a leather blazer with broad, square shoulders. As Doujima dashed up the hill toward the newcomer, he knelt beside the blue flower, touching it almost tenderly, and began to sing:

_Ja, ja, so blau... Blau, blau blüht der Enzian..._

The new song struck Doujima hard, but she pushed forward up the hill anyway. Behind her, she heard the golden-haired girl start in again on her own song -- _Edelweiss, Edelweiss_ -- but now it had a harder edge, as if she were trying to drown out the encroaching music. _Oh, please,_ begged Doujima, _don't let them start dueling._

The music behind her faded off abruptly, and in almost the same moment she reached the out-of-place vocalist on the hill. Without overture she tackled him, clamping a hand over his mouth and kicking his knees out from under him as she fished desperately in her pocket. After a frantic moment, she pulled out the item she'd been looking for: a roll of heavy duty silver-colored adhesive tape. Ignoring the square-jawed man's grunts and protests, she strapped the thick tape across his mouth, and then wound the roll around his head a few more times for good measure.

When she had forced him to the ground and taped his hands behind his back, she palmed a button on the communicator hooked to her belt. "We've got the anomaly under wraps," she called, flashing a wry grin at her own weak pun. "Give us a portal, please." The radio croaked an affirmative, and she turned to call to the new recruit.

Suddenly she realized why the other singing had stopped so abruptly: The golden-haired woman was gazing up at Don, starry-eyed, as he crooned a quiet ballad to her. Doujima made a frantic gesture to him, and with a flick of an eye that the dreaming girl could not possibly have noticed, Don acknowledged Doujima's order. A moment later, he had wrapped up the last hypnotic refrain and left the girl standing, dazed but happy, gazing at an armload of flowers. He jogged up the hill to help Doujima with her burden.

Doujima couldn't disguise her own slack-jawed astonishment. She didn't say a word as Don joined her and helped her carry their unhappy burden through the portal.

They emerged into the familiar white hallway of the transportal room, and were met by Amon, Priss, and a handful of security personnel who were waiting to take the blond singer to a safe holding room until his identity could be verified.

When the squirming blond baritone had been handed off, Priss tugged Doujima aside. "So," she asked quietly, "how's the new recruit working out?"

Doujima glanced over at Don, who was giving a brief report to the Third Director. She watched him for a moment, then smiled. "I think he'll do just fine," she said finally. "In fact, I think he might just turn out to be one of our most... _useful_ operatives."


	3. Chapter II: Hound Dog

CHAPTER II  
"(You Ain't Nothin' But A) Hound Dog" -- Elvis Presley

The girl picked at the end of one mousy brown ringlet, smacking her gum with the regular precision of Chinese water torture. At her left side stood a tall, hairy dog, panting slightly in the warmth of the room. Enishi eyed the canine suspiciously. Ever since their recent incursion into the Authors' World, he was a little mistrustful of the working breeds.

On the orders of their illustrious leader, he had retrieved the girl and dog from their post-story limbo and brought them here for an audience -- although the reason why Sephiroth had wanted him to summon this duo eluded him. What possible service could a badly-dressed teenage girl and a shaggy Belgian Shepherd render to their cause? 

Presumably to answer that question, Sephiroth himself glided into the room a moment later, his calf-length silver hair fanning out to fill the doorway behind him. Enishi drew himself up to subconscious attention in his leader's presence. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the girl bring out a pocket mirror and examine her makeup, pursing her garish red lips to make air kisses at her reflection. At her side, the dog turned its head and stretched its jaw in a yawn, whining faintly. The upright triangular ears folded back toward the neck, and the dog resumed panting.

Sephiroth stopped before the girl, and towered over her with a faintly amused expression while she finished her cosmetic touch-up. "Ah, Rosaleen," he greeted her suavely, as she tucked the mirror back into her pocket. "I've been looking forward to meeting you." 

The girl called Rosaleen tilted her head back to look up at his face. "Who are you?" she asked, sounding overwhelmingly bored. She squinted a moment. "Your eyebrows don't meet in the middle," she added crossly, and popped her gum loudly. 

Sephiroth continued without missing a beat, as if he hadn't heard her. "I have a task for you to perform. I'd like you to..."

"Were you born on Christmas?" Rosaleen interrupted, still squinting at him.

The pause in Sephiroth's flow of words was barely an instant, but it was enough for Enishi to notice. There were very few people who had the potential to irritate Sephiroth that much, and even fewer who had survived the encounter to brag about it. Enishi cringed back a step from the girl, expecting something horrible to happen to her at any moment.

"...help me collect someone," Sephiroth finished his sentence, setting his lips in a cold smile. "It's an easy job, but I think it would be best if you and your" --here he glanced down at the dog, which licked its lips and turned away again-- "friend carried it out."

Rosaleen eyed him distrustfully. "Why should I help you?" she demanded. "What's in it for me?" 

Sephiroth merely flashed his sinister, beatific smile, and from some hidden place produced a small object. It was black and glossy, about the length of a woman's thumb. It took Enishi a moment to identify it, because it looked so terribly out of place lying on Sephiroth's black leather glove.

"In your favorite color," Sephiroth purred. Rosaleen's gleaming eyes were fixed on the tube of lipstick, and Enishi could practically hear her salivating. Or perhaps that was the dog. He glanced down at the canine, still panting beside her leg. Now that he looked closely, it seemed as though the _dog_ were wearing lipstick, too...

After what seemed an unbearable three-second inner debate, Rosaleen snatched the lipstick from Sephiroth's hand, opened it and cranked it up to examine the color. It was a blinding red, brighter than the paint the _geisha_ used to color their mouths in Enishi's home town. Rosaleen could barely contain her glee as she capped the tube and hid it away in a pocket of her pleated skirt, but she remembered to assemble her face into the requisite scowl before replying. 

"Deal," she announced to Sephiroth. "I'll do it."

Sephiroth nodded approvingly. "Excellent. You've made a very grown-up decision." He chuckled to himself at something Enishi didn't understand. "Oh, and I must say," Sephiroth added, gesturing to the dog, "your Tervuren is simply stunning."

Rosaleen's candy-apple lips turned down into a sullen pout. "He's a wolf," she sulked.

Sephiroth's eyes flicked back to the girl's face, and he blinked once, but his expression never cracked. Enishi marveled at his commander's perfect composure. "Of course he is," Sephiroth continued smoothly. "And a fearsome one. I'm sure he'll do nicely for the job. Now, if you and your pet will come this way, I'll have Ignacio show you your target."

He gestured elegantly, and Rosaleen preceded him out of the door, the dog padding along at her heels. As she disappeared into the hallway, Sephiroth's placid expression was replaced by a scowl.

"We must never, _ever_ let her meet Dilandau," he growled to Enishi, before following her out of the room.

Enishi had a few seconds to breathe in private before Vanduri and Vergil interrupted his solitude. He glanced up as they entered, recalling that they'd had their own assignment to carry out. A mishandled recruiting mission had resulted in the accidental retrieval of someone unsuitable for their force, and they had been told to return him to where he had been found. "Did you get rid of him?" Enishi asked them without preamble.

Vergil just rolled his eyes, exasperated, and slouched into the nearest seat. Vanduri nodded stiffly; even the mage looked significantly annoyed. "He is gone," he confirmed. "We deposited him in the first Germanic world we could find."

Enishi's eyes widened. "You just dumped him somewhere? Not the place where he came from originally?"

Vergil groaned from his chair. "You don't understand," he moaned. "The yellow-haired freak wouldn't SHUT UP! That same song about the blue flowers, over and over again..."

Vanduri nodded solemnly. "We were nearly driven mad before we found that place," he confessed. "We could not stand the singing any longer. It was that, or kill him, and we thought this would be best." 

"Besides," Vergil added, "he's probably happy there. Everybody else was singing about flowers, too." 

Enishi's brow furrowed. "I wonder," he mused aloud. "I just hope it doesn't alert the other organization to our interference. We don't need any more run-ins with them right now." 

Vergil snorted his disdain for their enemies, and Enishi decided not to press his argument any further. After all, the damage was done -- there was nothing they could do to alter it without increasing the risk that the SPCFC would become involved.

He just hoped that Sephiroth didn't think to ask _him_ what had been done with the German folk singer.


	4. Chapter III: A Black Eyed Dog He Called

CHAPTER III  
"A Black Eyed Dog He Called At My Door..." -- Nick Drake

Knowledge flowed through his mind, a powerful, rushing tide against which no one idea could anchor for more than a fraction of a second. He thought of everything and nothing at once, his brain so saturated by understanding the world and everything in it that he no longer had the capacity to interact with his surroundings. He did not see the days passing by, nor did he taste the cup of tea that someone lifted to his lips. So he sat, on the front porch of eternity, a frail human shell that contained the whole library of mankind.

There was a dog in front of him. He blinked, a rare moment of lucidity permitting him to focus on something in his environment. The overwhelming tide of knowledge crept in at the edge of his field of vision, and his brain instantly drew up encyclopedic streams of superfluous information. Canis familiaris, _the domestic dog, most commonly kept as... Belgian Tervuren, one of two varieties commonly known in Europe as Belgian Shepherds. Originally bred for stock herding... Black dog, one of many signs believed by the superstitious to forecast death..._

The torrent of knowledge began to wash away the clear image before his eyes, and he struggled against it desperately. How he wanted to stay conscious! The dog was fading, farther and farther from his vision, and he reached for it uselessly. If only he could touch it, focus on it, think about nothing else for a moment, then perhaps he could regain some control over his thoughts! He would think about the dog, first. Then perhaps he might begin to think about other things. If only he could see, if only he could reach it...

He lurched to his feet, staggering forward on weak, disused limbs. The dog turned and disappeared behind the hedge, and he stumbled after it.

- - -

Enishi stared up at the sign over the massive gate, wondering whether it was actually possible for a ranch to walk in the sky, as the name suggested. Beside him, Dilandau mindlessly drew arcane symbols in the brown dust. Sephiroth had left them here and disappeared inside when the scorching sun was directly overhead; now it hung low in the sky, almost touching the horizon, and still their leader had not reappeared. Ostensibly they were here to stand guard, but in the hours they'd been here they had only encountered two groups of people -- the first, a chattering group of travelers with cameras around their necks, who paused only long enough to photograph the entrance to the massive complex, and the second, a strange party dressed from head to toe in shiny white armor. They, too, took photographs of each other standing in front of the sign and quickly departed. The only other visitor had been a small lizard, which Dilandau had found under a rock and dispatched in his own disturbing yet inimitable manner.

The world of the Authors, he had decided, could be incredibly boring. Their last couple of visits hadn't been too bad; he'd been threatened by dogs, he'd had a high-speed highway chase... but this trip had been less eventful. He only hoped that Sephiroth finished his business here quickly so they could move on to some place more interesting.

Just when Enishi was about to resume pacing up and down the fence, he heard a faint _whoosh_ and glanced up. Sephiroth stood balanced on the top of the sign, looking down at his subordinates with a strange expression on his face. After a moment, he stepped off of the sign and dropped to the ground beside Enishi as gracefully as if he had merely stepped off of the curb, rather than falling more than twice his own height.

Enishi did not ask what had transpired inside the complex, but he eyed his leader for an indication of whether or not the trip had been productive. Sephiroth still wore his unreadable expression, but when he caught Enishi looking at him, he shrugged. 

"Well," Sephiroth said simply, "the damage is done."

Enishi pondered this for a few seconds. "To us, or to them?" he asked.

Sephiroth chuckled mirthlessly. "I have introduced this world to something horrible beyond imagining," he murmured, watching Dilandau scribble formulae in the dirt. "I have installed it in one of the major franchises. And if fortune favors us, it will spread from there." He paused, and glanced out toward the setting sun in a rare moment of contemplation. "I only hope," he added gravely, "that we must never encounter it ourselves."

A moment later, the desert vanished as Sephiroth brought them all back to their headquarters. Enishi tried to orient himself as the familiar chrome and leather furnishings appeared around them. By the time he regained his equilibrium, Sephiroth was far ahead of them, moving down the hallway toward the holding cells.

Enishi jogged to catch up, and nearly collided with Sephiroth's shoulder armor as his leader stopped suddenly. He reeled backward, knocking into Dilandau, who squawked in protest and slapped him viciously in the kidneys. 

Sephiroth didn't seem to hear the noise his lieutenants were making; he was gazing blissfully at the door of one of the cells. "It seems," he said to no one in particular, "that our little Rosaleen has completed her assignment." His head tipped back and to the side, and Enishi shivered as his leader's aquamarine eyes brushed lazily across him to rest on Dilandau.

"Dilandau," he purred, "run and fetch Vergil and Vanduri for me, would you?" It was not a request; Dilandau pouted a little at the dismissal, but disappeared down the hallway. Sephiroth straightened again, all business, and opened the door.

- - -

"Marry! I' truth, the world is gone quite mad!" lamented Yorick, his voice muffled. The former jester wrestled with something shaped like a bucket that covered his head. Priss suppressed a chuckle as she reached over to help him remove the helmet.

"Sorry," she said when Yorick's sweating face was finally visible. "I'm afraid that's what they're wearing these days. You have to try to blend in, you know." 

"Must I this plate of armor wear, to hide? It is, alas! quite hard to breathe inside," he continued, panting slightly. He cast a loaded glance at the young man who had just come through the portal behind him.

Wilmer shrugged off his partner's glare and flicked at the narrow braid that dangled over the shoulder of his homespun tunic. "Hey, I'm looking the part, too, get me? I'm impersonatin' a Jetty. If you didn't talk so crazy, you wouldn't have to make like a Droid so's to get a piece of the action." He produced a cigarette from some hidden pocket and tapped it on his thumbnail.

Priss was steadying Yorick as he wriggled out of the bright metal box that had concealed his body. "It's _Jedi_, Wilmer, not Jetty. And don't smoke in here."

"Yeah, yeah." Wilmer rolled his eyes and sulked characteristically. "I'm gonna go take a breather." He slouched off down the hall, digging in his shirt for a book of matches.

Priss sighed and turned back to Yorick. "The debriefing's in fifteen minutes. Take a break and get something to drink. I'm going to see if I can drag the delinquent back in time for the meeting."

- - -

Rosaleen was slumped against the cell wall in a carefully constructed but not-quite-cool slouch. Her jaw worked on the ever-present chewing gum, and the motion called attention to the bright red smear of her mouth. Enishi grimaced at the color and glanced down to the shepherd beside her. The dog lay on the floor, its head resting on its paws, looking as if it dearly wanted to close off the rest of the world and take a nap.

Sephiroth ignored the girl and the dog and headed for the chair in the center of the room. Enishi stepped to the side to get a clear view of their latest acquisition.

A single man, a little shy of middle age, sat in the plain wooden chair. He was neatly dressed, with cropped blond hair and clean-shaven face, but there was an air of neglect about him, like a brightly-polished sword left too long on the wall without use. Enishi couldn't place the feeling; perhaps it came from his restless, unfocused eyes or the slack line of the man's mouth. 

Sephiroth stood before the chair. He leaned close to the man's face, searching for a response from the dim blue eyes, but the prisoner did not seem to see his surroundings.

Sephiroth smiled, a slow, beatific uncoiling that Enishi had learned to fear. "Hello, Joe," Sephiroth purred, eyes still fixed on their guest, "what do you know?" One long, black-gloved finger stretched out to touch the blond man's forehead. Enishi caught the faint glow and crackle of energy in the dim cell, and the prisoner's body lurched in a spasm.

A few seconds passed before Sephiroth stepped back, surveying his work. The blond man blinked a few times, and then his eyes swung slowly around the room, sweeping across Enishi and Sephiroth. When his gaze came to rest on the dog, his eyes widened in recognition. One hand twitched in his lap. 

Sephiroth gave a satisfied nod. "Now, at lest he'll be ambulatory and follow direct orders," he said, and turned to Enishi. "Get rid of the girl and dog and then join me. We have a message to send."

"A message?" Enishi echoed before he could stop himself. Their organization was entirely self-contained; who else would they need to communicate with? 

Sephiroth chuckled, divining his thoughts. "Yes," he answered, gesturing back toward the man in the chair. "Our new friend needs to send an urgent message... to the SPCFC."

- - -

The First Director lounged at the head of the briefing room table, looking deceptively relaxed. He glanced up appreciatively as his aide Wendy set a fresh cup of tea next to the bowler hat at his elbow.

The rest of the personnel around the table didn't appear to share his serenity. Near the Director, a brown-haired woman in a short red jacket was attempting to sort a jumble of papers into organized stacks. Beside her, a young blonde restlessly rifled through a pile of color-coded file folders. Across the table sat a surly-looking youth who alternated tapping a pencil and his fingernails on the tabletop. For several minutes the silence continued, perforated only by Priss' shuffling and Wilmer's impatient tapping.

At last the door opened to admit Yorick, still looking a bit wilted after his time in the metal suit. He slumped wordlessly into a chair and stared longingly at the tea the Director was sipping.

"Well, then," said Steed cheerfully, setting down his teacup. "Now that we're all assembled, let's get started, shall we?"

Doujima set down her stack of files and glanced around at the empty seats. Even after the loss of Alfred, there seemed to be too many open chairs. "Is Mireille still on leave?" she asked, trying to picture the personnel who were normally present at Ops meetings.

Privately, Doujima thought that their new operative might already be a better member of the team than certain other young men who were present -- but for once, she didn't voice her counsel. The last time she had insulted Wilmer, he mistakenly interpreted it as a compliment and began to follow her around, slouching dramatically against strategic doorways in an attempt to catch her eye. This had gone on for weeks, until an unfortunate shoulder injury (sustained when he was caught between a rapidly-closing door and the metal jamb) forced him to stop. Doujima wasn't about to start that aggravating game again -- especially since the reconstruction, during which many of the solid-wood doors had been replaced with hollow fiberboard. The new doors didn't slam _nearly_ as well as the old ones...

"She was scheduled to return earlier this week, but after that incident on the freeway, we gave her a few extra days," Priss answered without looking up from the documents in front of her. "She'll be rejoining us tomorrow morning. And as Mr. Lockwood is still in training, we thought it best not to involve him. We're limiting him to two cases per week until he gets into the routine."

Steed's voice interrupted her line of thought before she could devise any new methods of tormenting Wilmer. "Just to review, since I think most of us are already aware of the situation, I'd like to run through the information we've already collected. Miss Asagiri, if you please?"

The brunette pushed back the sleeves of her red jacket and pulled a file toward her on the tabletop. "The universe in question, which, if you'll refer to your reference lists, comprises the components SW-IVf, SW-Vf, SW-VIf, SW-Da, the obscure SW-CSt, as well as several hundred print titles, started out as a fairly stable world." She turned a page in and skimmed a few highlighted notes. "According to my report, we've only had to interfere a handful of times to straighten out errors or logical fallacies in the canon, such as the so-called 'parsec glitch.' However, it appears that the creator began to lose his grasp on the overall concept some time ago, and the universe has suffered as a result. We'd noticed a few abnormalities before this, but it seems that there have been some major upsets in the most recent installment, primarily in the form of continuity flaws. We suspect that canon was altered after it had already been established, either internally, or by some external influence on the creator. The patterns we're seeing now indicate that there is an active anomaly, in the form of either a character or a plot device." Priss closed the file and looked back at Steed.

The Director took another sip from his teacup. "Thank you, m'dear. I understand that Yorick and Wilmer have spent the past few days collecting additional data. Gentlemen, what do you have to share with us?" 

Yorick did not immediately answer; his eyes were glued to the cup of tea that Wendy was graciously pouring him. He acknowledged Steed's question with a faint wave of his hand, signaling that Wilmer should go first.

Wilmer shrugged. "They're nuts, for starters, the lot of 'em," he muttered. "They fight each other with sticks of light, 'stead of with proper guns." He fished in his pocket and produced a toothpick, which he stuck in his mouth so that it bobbed on his lip with every word. "An' there's this slick Jetty cat who moves things around just by thinkin' it, though he says that it's 'cause of some invisible force all around us." Wilmer gestured vaguely with the toothpick. "But I didn't see the scary thing. You'll have to ask him about the ano-mally."

Steed nodded and made a note on a pad in front of him, almost as if Wilmer's report had contained useful information, and turned to Yorick expectantly. "You think you've found something that fits the pattern of the anomaly?"

The jester had nearly finished the cup of tea, and looked much the better for it. He nodded and began his report:

"It is, in truth, a strange and foreign land.  
The earth is dry, and cover'd all in sand.  
"No birds, nor trees, and not one stick of green --  
yet crowded still, this land of Tattooine!  
"We visited a place called Mos Eisley,  
a wond'rous, yet fair frightening city.  
"And coming out of the cantina there,  
I met a thing that fill'd me all with fear!  
"Hid in my metal shell like an oyster,  
I saw, half beast, half man -- a vile monster.  
"His ears hung low; his lips were swollen, too.   
His skin was rough, a sickly greenish hue.  
"I thought, 'If there be evil in this place,  
'Then surely it be writ in yonder face!'  
"At terror's edge, I teeter'd on the brink;   
he introduced himself as... as..."

Here, Yorick coughed, then took a large gulp of tea to steady himself before he could finish. "He introduced himself... as Jar-Jar Binks." 

There were gasps all around the table. Although they had never seen the character, the name itself seemed somehow an ill portent. After a moment's stunned immobility, Priss began writing furiously on her notepad, occasionally referring to the files in front of her for information.

Steed sat back, less shaken than the others at the table, but far from unaffected. "Doujima," he said after a moment, "I want you to help Priss research this. If this... thing... came from outside of canon, we need to isolate and purge it as soon as possible. Yorick, Wilmer... I hate to send you back into danger, but we need to track this creature's movements closely. You two will return and monitor the situation, but do not under any circumstances attempt to make contact with the character in question. If it is the anomaly, the results could be catastrophic." Steed gathered his notes into a stack and slid them into a folder. "Any questions?"

There was general head-shaking around the table, and Steed nodded in satisfaction. "Very well, then," he said. "Yorick, Wilmer, get some rest. We'll start again first thing in the morning."

- - -

Wendy blinked at the screen and rubbed her eyes. She glanced at the clock over the door, trying to clear her blurry vision, and smothered a yawn. She'd volunteered to stay late and catch up on some of the paperwork that had been stacking up in the Directors' inboxes, but she really didn't function well at night. The offer had been made partially out of guilt that she always stayed in the office doing paperwork and drinking tea while the other operatives risked their lives night and day on the field. They'd had to make due with limited manpower and resources after the fire, and since Alfred's death a few weeks ago the Directors had become more and more exhausted. Wendy suspected they would all be better after a good, long vacation -- but of course they couldn't afford the time for that, either.

She resumed typing, promising herself another cup of tea as soon as she finished the letter D. She was trudging through the current list of unfiled characters, cataloging the recyclable heroine personalities in the romance genre. As she finally graduated from a long series of Daphnes and entered her first Darlene, she was interrupted by a flashing signal in the lower corner of the screen.

A message for the Directors, at this hour? Wendy checked the header, but it seemed to come from outside the SPCFC's internal network. Frowning, she opened the message. She would skim the message, and see where it should be filed...

_There's no need to alert anyone, Wendy. I know you'll see this first._

Wendy jerked back from the machine as if it had burned her. She forced herself to breathe deeply and slow her racing pulse, then glanced around the room to ensure that no one could be watching. Slowly, she crept back to the screen, and carefully read and reread the rest of the message.

When she was certain she had it memorized, she quietly deleted it.


	5. Chapter IV: I'm The Man In Black

CHAPTER IV  
"I'm The Man In Black" -- Johnny Cash

"It's him, that's for sure," Wilmer breathed into the communicator. There was a faint crackle of static, and Priss' voice came back over the radio.

"Are you certain he's the source of the trouble?" she asked. "There are a lot of factors, and we don't want to pull the wrong one."

"We must beware; the beast-man draweth near," cautioned Yorick. Wilmer glanced around the corner, and shuddered as the floppy-eared creature sauntered toward them.

"Yousa not need to worry. Meesa gonna helpa you save the Alliance!" the mutant creature babbled emphatically, his huge lips bobbing. A sullen-looking teenager slouched along beside him, looking bored. Wilmer recognized his tunic and the narrow braid of hair, and nudged Yorick with an elbow.

"That one looks like a Jetty," he whispered, pointing.

Yorick shoved Wilmer behind a large wooden crate as the teenager's head swiveled toward them. Wilmer started to protest, but Yorick gestured for silence.

"Wait; I sense spies over there," they heard the young man say. He drew the bizarre light-stick weapon from his belt and ignited it, then moved directly toward their hiding place. Wilmer and Yorick crept along the row of crates and ducked down an aisle of boxes, but soon found themselves trapped in a corner.

The beast-man and the Jetty came closer, and Wilmer let out a string of vile expletives as he and Yorick turned to face them.

- - -

Priss whipped the earphones off, looking stunned. Mireille glanced over at her, one eyebrow raised in question. Priss shook her head. "I don't know where he learned language like that..." she began, but was interrupted by another alarm on the control panel.

"I'm on it," Mireille assured her, already tapping commands on the panel. Her head snapped up suddenly. "We need to pull them out of there," she warned, turning to the engineers beside them. "They've begun to deviate from canon, and it looks like there's going to be a reaction."

Illya rapidly began entering portal coordinates. Priss slipped her headset back on, making quick notes from the operatives' final observations. A moment later, the portal opened, and the deafening roar of an explosion rocked the control room. Wilmer and Yorick dove through the block of light, followed by smoke and bits of rubble.

Wilmer rolled to his knees, still cursing. Blood dripped from a gash in his shoulder, and his tunic was spotted with grime and debris. Yorick, his metal helmet gone, nodded in the direction of the control panel. "Nice timing, lad," he gasped, "and you fair ladies, too." After a moment spent struggling with the metal box he still wore, he regained his feet and reached down to help Wilmer up.

Wilmer snatched his arm away indignantly. "Hey! I'm injured, here!" he growled, glaring up at Yorick.

Yorick eyed him for a moment. "Tell me, boy," he burst out at last, breaking his typical pentametric cadence. "Did you once offend a traveling gypsy?"

Priss coughed suddenly to hide her snicker, and stepped forward to help Yorick out of his costume. "Both of you get cleaned up, and meet in the briefing room in..." She checked her wristwatch, "...twenty minutes. That will give you plenty of time." She poked at Wilmer with one boot. "Come on, down to Medical with you."

- - -

Steed rubbed his palms briefly over his face in an attempt to lift the weight that pulled at his eyelids. He had worked through most of the night, and Priss' call had caught him just as he had stretched out in his quarters for a rest. These past few weeks, fatigue had drained the team of Directors as much as their increasingly chaotic cases.

The same team of operatives, plus Mireille, was assembled in the briefing room. They were now staring at him expectantly. Yorick and Wilmer, fresh out of the clinic, had shared the traumatic experience of this latest mission, and now his subordinates looked to him for direction. He wished he had orders to give them, but his mind was blank.

This was the sixth mission that had gone awry in half as many weeks. Comedies suddenly turned to dramas... misplaced fictional characters... plot twists that no author could have written. There was a pattern forming here, Steed was certain... if only he could see it! Once again, he skimmed the notes he'd taken from Yorick's report, then shuffled through previous incident reports, but nothing seemed to fit together. The only related characteristic of each case was its apparent randomness.

With more information, perhaps he could draw more ties between the incidents, but he was hesitant to send his operatives into the unknown again. Today, Yorick and Wilmer had been lucky enough to escape with minor injuries, but Alfred's death was still fresh in all their minds. Steed could not risk anyone else simply for the sake of gathering data.

He hated to call the other Directors in from their much-deserved rest, but he knew that he could not solve this mystery on his own. "Priss," he said, sighing heavily, "call an emergency meeting. I want Amon and Noin here by noon."

- - -

Enishi stifled a yawn. He was sprawled on his usual couch in their lounge -- still silver and black, but freshly redecorated by Sephiroth after their latest excursion into the Authors' World; apparently he'd been inspired by the reclusive luxury of the ranch they'd visited -- and he was loathing his current assignment, which was more or less to babysit their prisoner and make sure he didn't wander off.

Said prisoner, to whom Sephiroth referred as "Joker," was sitting in a chair, staring blankly at whatever object happened to be moving at any given moment. Enishi had given up wondering why the man was important to their cause, and instead had begun wondering if he was fundamentally capable of doing anything other than sitting in a chair.

The only other occupant of the room was Celina, who was about as interesting to watch as Joker. She was standing, instead of sitting, at the far end of the lounge. She had adopted her typical expression, a sort of open-mouthed, happy astonishment, and was gazing adoringly at the recessed lights in the ceiling.

It was at times like these that Enishi really wished that Sephiroth believed in magazine subscriptions. He'd seen some really fascinating ones in some of the other worlds they'd visited, but so far their leader hadn't seen any reason to stock the lounge with _Swordcraft Today_ or _Modern Combat_.

Enishi looked lazily from Celina to Joker and back, gradually realizing that both of them were staring intently at the can lights. He followed their gaze and saw a tiny white moth flitting near the bulb. Apparently the motion of its wings was enough to arrest both Celina and Joker's limited spans of attention. The moth circled the lamp a few more times, and then dropped lower to try its luck at another light source.

With a graceful, lightning-quick sweep of her hands, Celina trapped the unfortunate moth between her palms. She slowly opened her fingers, careful to grasp the insect's wings so that it couldn't escape, and examined it reverently.

Joker was leaning forward in his chair, staring at the moth with rapt attention. He reached one hand toward the imprisoned insect, though he was still several feet away, and made a gentle clutching motion with his fingers as he had seen Celina do.

Celina lifted the little moth close to her face, gazing at it sweetly. After a moment, she very lovingly put it in her mouth and swallowed it. Joker's face clouded with confusion, and his hand dropped back to his lap, once again limp.

Enishi sighed and let his head fall back onto the couch cushions. He trusted his leader as far as he'd ever trusted anyone, but there were also times -- like this one -- when he would have given quite a lot to understand what in the world Sephiroth was thinking.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the door whispered open and Sephiroth himself entered, trailed closely by Vicious, Vanduri and Ignacio. Enishi bolted upright, self-conscious under his leader's scrutiny. Sephiroth wore a triumphant expression, and he carried a sleek silver device that Enishi recognized as some variety of electronic storage unit. Enishi hadn't quite caught up on the wonders of otherworldly technology, but he could guess what Sephiroth was holding, and why his leader was so delighted. With this, they would be taking action very soon.

Sephiroth ordered Ignacio to take Joker back to his cell -- Enishi felt a rush of relief -- then brandished the electronic object and called his lieutenants to him. "Gentlemen," he announced, "here is our Keystone." He paused and glanced around, frowning slightly. "Wasn't Dilandau with you?" he asked Enishi.

Enishi shrugged helplessly and pointed beyond Sephiroth's shoulder, where Celina hovered just out of sight behind the silver armor plates. As he turned, she reached out and brushed the fingers of one hand through his trailing silver hair, blushing furiously. Sephiroth's mouth quirked in annoyance.

"Vanduri," he growled, "would you kindly fix this?"

Vanduri drew the girl to the other end of the lounge as Sephiroth and the others moved to the glossy black conference table. A moment later, there was a guttural scream and a flash of light from the far end of the room, and presently Vanduri and a slightly disoriented Dilandau joined Vicious and Enishi at the table.

Sephiroth glanced around at his ring of loyal followers, and a smooth, cool smile crept across his lips. "And now," he began, his voice flowing silk, "here is our plan..."

- - -

Noin fought the urge to yawn the moment she stepped into SPCFC headquarters. The exhausting weight of the facility bore down on her. Even though it had been over a week since she'd had to Direct, she hardly felt rested.

_We all need vacations_, she thought, but knew it was futile to hope. She had been a soldier most of her life, and she knew better than anyone else on staff that you couldn't take leave during a war. She stretched her arms over her head, attempting to alleviate the tension she could already feel setting in across her shoulders, and turned toward the office quad.

She was immediately flagged by a blonde brandishing a sheaf of folders. "Mireille!" Noin said brightly. "When did you get back?"

Mireille glanced up at a clock on the wall. "About... an hour and forty-seven minutes ago. They called me in for emergency backup."

Noin sighed. "Is it that bad? I knew things must be hectic for Steed to call us in, but I didn't realize we were so short-staffed."

Mireille nodded. "Things haven't exactly been going according to plan this week," she said, handing the Second Director a stack of folders. "Here are the reports for yesterday and today. You'll hear all about it in the meeting. I need to go relieve Priss so she can attend; Steed told her to be there."

Noin nodded and glanced through the files. "Thanks. I'm sorry you had to cut your vacation short."

Mireille shook her head as she started down the hallway. "It's not much of a problem for me," she called back, "but the sentiment goes double for you."

Noin took that as an ill portent of things to come at the meeting, and tried to relax her shoulders again. She continued on to her office, where she met Amon coming from his own quarters. She greeted him with a wave, and he gave a curt nod in return. Noin noted that he looked a little more haggard and scruffy than usual. Either he was really that exhausted from his week as Director, or he didn't spend much time on personal appearance on his days off. Probably a little of both, she decided.

"Steed wants to get started as soon as he's done handing out the rest of the day's assignments," he told her, his voice a little gravelly. "We're to meet in the conference room."

Noin paused in the doorway to her office and waved Mireille's folders. "Is there anything else I should do to prepare?"

Amon thought for a moment. "Since I'm sure this meeting is about the recent operations failures, I suppose he'll want copies of those case reports from the past few weeks. And bring anything else that you think might be relevant. I have a feeling we'll be doing a lot of cross-referencing."

"All right. I'll collect the files, and meet you there in five minutes."

Amon nodded and started down the hallway. "I'll see you there. Oh, one more thing," he added, glancing over his shoulder. "Black is back."

Noin blinked once in surprise, and then she smiled. "Make that ten minutes."

- - -

She found Black alone in the lounge, which was strangely empty considering that it was nearing lunchtime. Black always seemed to appear in deserted places. Noin wasn't sure if this was due to some knack he had for finding unpopulated areas, or if it was his ability to empty a room with his dark, brooding presence. She suspected the latter; most of the SPCFC's staff seemed intimidated, if not outright terrified, by the Arcane Specialist. Noin could see why Black's silent, mysterious manner disturbed them, but it had never affected her the same way. In contrast, she had always found an inexplicable comfort in his quiet presence. Perhaps it was simply that his tacit nature reminded her of someone else she'd known.

Black barely turned his head at the sound of the door, but the shadowed grey eyes swept toward her. Recognition illuminated his thin face, and the taut muscles under his pale skin relaxed into an expression Noin had learned to interpret as a smile. Today he was dressed in some sort of dark robes, his black hair hanging loose to the middle of his back. The clothing hung nearly to the floor, making his tall frame even more imposing. A small, rough-looking package was tucked under one arm.

"Welcome back," Noin greeted him brightly. "We were hoping you'd return soon. I'm afraid we've piled up a lot of work for you." She was curious to know what he had been doing for the past few weeks, but she knew better than to ask. Black never answered questions, and it wasn't wise to press him. He had volunteered to assist the SPCFC as an operative, functioning under the command of the Directors, but the working relationship was most definitely on his own terms.

Black nodded minutely in answer to her greeting. "Hello, Lucrezia. You've been busy, I see."

Noin returned the nod with a warm smile. Black always called her by her given name, though she didn't know why. Since childhood, she had been simply "Noin" -- faster to say, easier to pronounce, and a far less feminine form of address for a soldier. In her memory, only her parents had actually called her Lucrezia. And Treize, early on, but she'd quickly put a stop to that. For some reason, though, she didn't mind Black using her first name.

Of course, even if she'd objected, she wasn't sure she dared confront him about it. They had learned early on that Black did exactly as he wished. At times the arrangement made operations a bit inconvenient for the Directors, but Black had more than earned the special considerations. He was invaluable to the SPCFC, despite his odd habit of disappearing for days or weeks at a time.

"A lot has happened since you left. We're still trying to catch up, but since most of the staff has been busy cleaning up after the fire, we're a little behind schedule. And there have been other complications." Giving in to curiosity, Noin paused to nod at the shabbily-wrapped package. "What do you have there?"

Black glanced down and fingered the paper absently, as if he'd forgotten about the parcel. "A mirror," he said after a pause. "It's a gift for... someone."

Noin took the ambiguous answer as a cue to move back to business matters, and began to place the files she carried on the table. She pointed to each one as she gave Black his instructions.

"These are the arcane incident reports from the past few weeks. Most of them aren't high priority, so just give us your comments whenever you have time. There are also a couple of relocations we'd like your opinion on. They're reviewed briefly in this report. If you need the full case details, Wendy can pull them for you."

She touched the last file, and hesitated. "This is what we'd really like you to examine," she said after a moment. "You remember the incident just before the fire, when that FC escaped with help from the outside?"

"Of course. A boy... name of Dilandau, as I recall."

Noin nodded. "Five weeks ago, a retrieval was sabotaged by an outside force -- apparently the same group that aided Dilandau. Amon intervened and managed to extract the FC, but one of our operatives was killed." Noin could feel Black's gaze sharpen on her, but she kept her expression carefully neutral. "Since then, there have been at least five confirmed excursions into the Authors' World by these same interlopers, including one last week that involved several of our agents. Their objective is unknown, but we have proof that they have altered the canon for several worlds. We've nearly exhausted our resources trying to clean up after them."

Black was frowning. "Are these confirmed fictional characters?"

"At first we weren't sure if they were rogue characters or some sort of misplaced author insertion, but we've confirmed ID for several of them. They all originated in different worlds, though, which is confusing."

Black picked up the folder and flipped it open. "Who are they?"

Noin reached over his arm and turned a few pages in the file. "We don't have pictures of all of them, but this is as much information as we could compile on their personnel." She tapped the first image in the folder. "This one is from CBa2.5c; his name, we were told by Mireille, is Vicious. He does seem consistent with the character of the same name from CB1a. Apparently he was a a major character in the CBa canon, but for some reason he wasn't purged after his death there. We're still researching that fallacy. There's also Dilandau, the boy who escaped and burned part of this building. He's originally from VoE1a, as we already knew. At least two others have been sighted, but we don't have positive ID for them. We do have the name of the leader, though. According to Amon's description he's very tall, with long white or silver hair. His subordinates call him Sephiroth."

At the mention of the rogue leader's name, something in Black's manner changed subtly. Noin couldn't identify what was different, but for a split second Noin felt, more than saw, Black's reaction. She had a faint impression of shock, and perhaps something more...

The impatient _beep_ of her communicator snapped her out of her own surprise, and she glanced at the clock. She was two minutes late. "Steed has called an emergency Directors' meeting," she explained apologetically. "I have to go. Let me know if you have any questions."

At the door, Noin half-turned to glance back at Black. His face was once again blank, and Noin sighed regretfully. Black was the only person in the organization who was more stoic than Amon. _And the moment he starts to develop an expression, I have to leave..._ She shook her head and left for her meeting.


	6. Chapter V: Hit Me With Your Best Shot

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CHAPTER V

"Hit Me With Your Best Shot!" -- Pat Benatar

"Where's Wendy?" Amon asked without looking up from the paper he was reading. "I could really use some coffee right now."

Steed nodded to Priss, who wordlessly stood and headed for the door. "She asked for the day off," he said. "Apparently she wore herself out working late this week. It's the first time she's ever asked for any time off, so I gave it to her. If I'd known we were going to have this kind of trouble..."

Noin shook her head. "No, let her have it. She always works too hard," she said. "She needs the down time as much as we do."

A moment later, Priss reappeared with a carafe of black liquid in each hand. "Coffee," she said, hefting first one pot and then the other, "and tea. It won't be as good as Wendy's, but it still has caffeine."

Amon nodded his thanks and pushed folders around to clear a space for his mug on the table. Priss poured for the Directors and herself, then returned to her place at the table where stacks of incident reports waited to be sorted. They'd been at this for nearly an hour, after deciding on the only course of action that could utilize the limited information they had uncovered on their world-jumping counterparts. They were searching the files one by one, looking for individuals who might have something to do with Sephiroth's group of interlopers.

Steed selected one sheet from a recent file. "What about this case?" he asked, waving the paper. "Let's see... Noin, this would be yours... a rescue operation involving Bishounen Abuse from KC4? Looks like you handled it personally."

Noin took the page from him and skimmed it, then nodded. "I remember this one," she answered after a moment, "but I don't think he fits the profile. He had a complete memory wipe before he was placed."

Amon gestured for the page and glanced through the list of code numbers that indicated the character's previous placements. "What about previous roles?" he asked. "Could there be any carryover from another world? Let's see... before KC, he was filed under GW. That might be worth checking into. Priss, what data do we have on the GW universe?"

Steed glanced over at Noin, who cleared her throat uncomfortably. "Don't bother looking it up, Priss," she said quietly. Amon looked at her quizzically, and Noin shrugged. "It's my home world," she said, almost apologetically. She drew the file page back across the table and looked over the character profile. "I knew this kid pretty well; he was kind of a joker, and he had a morbid fascination with death, but that was actually fairly typical for people his age in that world. I just don't think he's the kind we're looking for." She handed the page to Priss, who silently filed it.

Steed nodded, a smile around his eyes. "Now I see why you handled that case yourself," he said kindly, and all three Directors returned to their paperwork as if nothing had occurred.

After a few minutes of silence, Noin collected a pile of folders and stood to transfer them to the section for already-reviewed material. A folder like the one she'd given Black caught her eye, and she picked it up again to review the scant information they'd collected on their mysterious antagonists. She flipped through the pages, musing on the names and pictures of each personality. Vicious... Dilandau... Sephiroth...

A new thought struck her, and she turned to Steed and Amon. "Wait a moment," she said suddenly. "We've been profiling primarily on source material, personality and character traits, based on what we know of Vicious and Dilandau, right? Nothing else?"

"That's all the information we have," Steed said, a bit defensively. "It's broad, but we can't narrow our search until we have new data."

Noin's blue eyes glittered with inspiration. She stepped around the table so that everyone could see and held up the picture of Vicious, followed by the picture of Dilandau, then rough sketches made from Amon's description of Sephiroth and the two others he'd seen.

"Priss," she asked, "can we sort characters by hair color?"

- - -

Enishi glanced furtively at the others standing in line beside him. Vicious slouched against the wall, fingering the hilt of his katana; Dilandau toyed with a box containing a block of malleable material attached to a dangerous-looking mechanism with a display that flashed red numerals. Their strike force was small, but Sephiroth seemed confident that they wouldn't meet any real resistance from the SPCFC. Enishi almost hoped his leader's assumption was wrong. The SPCFC boasted a few fighters nearly as strong as their own men, and Enishi's fingers twitched eagerly at the possibility of battle.

Sephiroth himself entered the room a moment later, trailed by Vanduri and Vergil. "I want you two to remain here on standby," he was saying. "Be alert; we don't know what form or condition the Item is in, and I may need you to assist in the retrieval."

He turned to the others then, smiling in a way that made Enishi's stomach clench in anticipation, and said, "Shall we go?" It was less a question than an order, and the three men assembled dutifully in a tight circle around their leader. A moment later, Enishi's view of headquarters winked out of sight.

- - -

Steed chose a character from his stack at random and held up a picture of a wizened old man in a pointed grey hat. "Gandalf the Grey, a wizard... but he doesn't quite seem to fit the type, does he?"

Noin wrinkled her nose. "No, I think we can rule him out." She picked one from her stack of potentials, ignoring the twinge in the back of her neck. All this fine print must be giving her a headache... She held up a profile of a teenager with white hair and bright turquoise eyes. "Hitsugaya Toushirou, fifth squad captain..." She squinted at the description. "This one's a Shinigami, so he's used to going between worlds... but his backstory doesn't seem quite angst-ridden enough to fit the profile."

Amon pulled another sheet and read from it. "How about this one?" He held up an image of a man in a kimono with short, wavy silver hair. "Gintaro. Best known for having a natural perm..." Amon frowned and tucked the paper back in the file. "No, I think not."

Steed waved a page showing a man with large eyes, flashy earrings, and plenty of white hair. "Father Olivier, currently on a quest to learn the secret of 'G'..." Steed raised an eyebrow at the description. "I'm willing to bet he's not our man."

Noin grinned at the picture. "Ooh, he's pretty. But I agree, he doesn't fit." She rifled through her stack and held up a profile of a dark-skinned man wearing a priest's collar; his white hair was bound in a tail at the back of his neck. "Book, a Shepherd, passenger aboard Firefly-class vessel Serenity... I don't know; he doesn't seem to match, either." She handed the page to Priss and rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the pressure at the base of her skull. Priss glanced at her with concern, but Noin shrugged and waved her off.

Steed continued and held up a picture of a silver-haired character with pale wings and exotic yellow eyes. "Taro, a Ryuu... consort to Darashinai'rika..." Steed shook his head and put the sheet away. "On second thought, this one looks like just a walk-on character. No depth."

Amon drew another profile. "Keiki, from JK1a... wait, I think this one is actually a unicorn. Are we counting form-shifters in this?"

Noin rubbed her eyes with one hand, trying to focus on Amon's words despite the distracting buzz in the back of her mind. She bit her lip and tried to clear her mind with the sensation, but the odd feeling didn't go away.

A moment later, Steed interrupted Amon with a raised hand. His eyes were on Noin. "What is it?" he asked her quietly. "Do you sense something?"

Noin shook her head. "There's nothing I can really pinpoint," she murmured, "just a vague feeling... almost as if there were someone watching me." She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know how to describe it."

Steed regarded her for a moment. "What about mapping it out?" he suggested thoughtfully. "Like you did before... Is there something here, at headquarters, or is it outside?" He shook his head before Amon, glancing between Steed and Noin as if they'd lost their minds, could voice the question that was written on his face.

Noin hesitated and then closed her eyes, imagining a rough floor plan of SPCFC headquarters in her mind. She stretched out, feeling for the buzzing presence, reaching toward it...

A burst of energy rocked her mind like an explosion. Her eyes flew open and she clutched the edge of the table, gasping. When she looked up, she saw Steed and Amon standing on either side of her, unsure what to do. She stood as well, forcing down the wave of nausea that accompanied sudden movement.

"They're here," she said, still trying to catch her breath. "They've breached security, somehow. They're on the third level."

Steed whirled toward the nearest communications panel to sound the alert. Amon still stared at her, uncomprehending. "Who is?" he asked, and Noin remembered that would have no reason to know about the strange ability she'd displayed when Steed had first recruited her.

"I don't know how I know," Noin said slowly, "but I'm sure it's Sephiroth."

She barely had time to see the stunned look on Amon's face before the room fell dark.

- - -

Steed glanced dubiously at the flickering strip lighting along the ceiling as he worked his way down the hallway. The sudden power failure had triggered the emergency system, but given the wavering illumination in the halls, Steed wasn't at all certain that the backup system was any more reliable than the primary. Mentally, he added inspecting the generators to the list of things they should do when they had some spare time. It was a long list, and Steed couldn't remember the last time he'd scratched a completed item from it.

His communicator buzzed directions as he hurried along, his staff tracking the disturbance as quickly as they could bring the equipment back on line, and soon he reached the corridor that Security had flagged as ground zero. Even in the inconsistent lighting, it wasn't difficult to locate the breach: A smoking fissure gaped in one side of the hallway. The surrounding walls were charred black, and shreds of acoustic tile hung in jagged triangles from the ceiling, giving the impression of a dark, gaping mouth baring broken teeth.

A figure was silhouetted in the center of this fiendish grin, draped dramatically in black leather. Silver hair streamed over his back, gleaming pale red in the dim emergency light. He turned casually at Steed's approach, and Steed privately tipped his hat to whatever artist was responsible for the masterpiece of character design before him. If Noin's instincts were to be trusted, this was Sephiroth... and suddenly, Steed understood why it had been so difficult for Amon to describe his encounter with the mysterious interloper.

Steed drew up as the hallway around him clogged with smoke, standing at relaxed attention opposite the formidable man in black. He saluted the intruder with a wave of his umbrella, stirring the haze between them.

"As a rule, the SPCFC extends its warmest greetings to everyone who arrives," Steed began genially, "although we generally prefer that visitors utilize the more conventional approach through the front door." He smiled, though there was a marked edge to his words. "Forgive me for being so bold as to inquire... you would be Mr. Sephiroth, I presume?"

Sephiroth's head canted to the side as his eyes swept from Steed's prim bowler hat to his meticulously polished shoes. His lips twitched as if he were resisting a smirk, but he said nothing.

Steed politely ignored the unspoken barb. He stood rooted in the center of the hallway, both hands resting on the handle of his umbrella in front of him. "My dear sir," he added gamely, "would you think me terribly rude if I suggested that we dispense with the formalities and..."

Before Steed could finish the sentence, Sephiroth swept his arm to the side. In an instant, a swirl of dense vapor snaked out of his hand and resolved into a gleaming blade.

Steed raised his eyebrows at the six feet of steel that curved between him and his opponent. "Should I take this as your answer, then?"

In reply, Sephiroth lunged forward.

Steed raised his closed umbrella over his head, bracing it with both hands as the long Masamune blade sliced the air above him. Sparks flew from the clash, and the impact sent Steed reeling back several paces. Sephiroth landed, catlike, and stared at the plain black umbrella in clear astonishment.

Steed fell back into a deceptively relaxed posture and swung the umbrella once by the cane handle. "Thank the Author for signature weapons," he murmured dryly, and with a flick of his wrist he drew the blade hidden within the umbrella's shaft. He was preparing to charge when a black-gloved hand brushed his shoulder, halting his forward motion with a touch.

"Stand down," rumbled a voice. "I am the only one who can face him equally."

Black stood at Steed's elbow, a red cloak buckled over his typical dark clothing. His eyes, gleaming the color of blood, were fixed hard on Sephiroth. Distracted though he was, Steed did not fail to register the return glare, smoldering with hatred, that Sephiroth turned on the Arcane Specialist.

Steed had learned to question neither Black's reasons nor his abilities, and there were enough unknown factors in this situation that he was eager to let someone else engage the enemy while he attempted to organize their scattered defenses. He moved out of Black's way with a polite tip of his bowler hat.

"Tagging out, then, Mr. Black. Do take care." Confident that Black had the situation covered as best as anyone could, Steed turned and dashed for the engineering quad, palming his communicator as he ran. Behind him, he heard the electric snap of energy searing the air. The sound, he thought unwillingly, was ominously like the crackle of flames.

- - -

Noin flicked her weapon's safety off as she approached the final corner, reminding herself that she had only a few rounds left before she would need to reload. All general staff had been ordered to evacuate this area, which left the compromised quarter entirely unprotected save for Black and herself.

From the command center, Priss had commed her that Steed was on his way to engage the tertiary power grid. Noin knew that Amon was already at work establishing a security perimeter to protect their most critical areas, but she also knew that his efforts would be delayed by the temporary loss of power when Steed restored the reactor. His success would depend, in part, on their ability to hold the enemy here until the new security measures could be put in place.

She slowed to a cautious walk as she reached the hallway, hugging the corner for the scant cover it provided. There was a film of smoke and dust in the air, and the tang of ozone burned her throat. She squinted as the dust slowly began to clear, and after a few seconds she could make out shapes in the haze. Black's dark form was nearest, with his back to her, and just beyond him she could see the figures of three others.

The tall one in front was dressed in black, his shoulders adorned with silver armor that glinted red and white in the flickering light of the hallway. He was stunningly beautiful, an angelic countenance belied by narrowed aquamarine eyes and a malevolent smile. She knew at once that this was Sephiroth; even without Amon's description, she recognized the authority and power in his bearing, the charisma that radiated from him, and matched it with the presence she'd felt earlier. He was a force unto himself, and not one she would have chosen as an adversary.

Behind the leader lurked another tall man with short, spiky grey hair, dressed in a bright orange outfit that would have sent the wardrobe master Elton into a seizure. Off to the side crouched one she recognized from the file as Vicious. It looked as if there might be someone else farther down the hallway, but the figure was indistinct. Noin began to creep forward, but halted abruptly as Black threw out a hand in warning.

"Stay back, Lucrezia," he said quietly, not turning to look behind him.

Noin saw Sephiroth's eyes widen slightly, and the eerie blue-green gaze turned in her direction. "Surely not," she heard him murmur, his eyes fixed on her. After a moment, he chuckled mirthlessly and turned back to Black.

"Really, Vincent," Sephiroth chided, shaking his head. "Trying to replace her with this surrogate is simply pathetic. You ought to be ashamed."

Noin couldn't see Black's reaction to the taunt, but before she could wonder what the words meant her attention was drawn by furtive movement behind Sephiroth. Vicious and the other man were using their leader's speech as an opportunity to creep along the wall toward Noin. She raised her gun.

"Stand where you are, and put down your weapons," she called clearly, her experience as a CO imbuing her voice with authority. Now that she had an unobstructed view, she could see how her opponents were armed. Vicious carried a katana at his side, as Amon had reported. The man in orange wore a sheathed sword across his shoulders. As Noin watched, he reached behind his back and drew out an old-fashioned revolver. From the motion of his body, it was apparent that he did not plan on putting down the weapon.

With more instinct than thought, Noin targeted the revolver's grip, and easily shot it out of her enemy's hand. Startled, Vicious lunged forward, and Noin nudged the muzzle of her own weapon toward him and fired. The first shot ricocheted against the flat of his blade, and the second bullet flashed at its base, shattering the _tsuba_. Her final bullet removed the sword cleanly from his grasp. Both men staggered back toward their leader, temporarily checked.

The man called Sephiroth made an appreciative sound as he glanced down at his disarmed subordinates. "Impressive. Such marksmanship… though it's really not surprising, considering the source." His gaze returned to Black, who hadn't moved.

Noin ejected the spent clip and replaced it with her only spare, inching forward to get a better view of Black and Sephiroth. The muzzle of her gun remained low, aimed toward the ground. She wouldn't risk firing at the leader; with his mysterious powers, the shot was too unpredictable. She would have to wait until he was distracted. Was Black going to engage him?

"You've been training her, I see. She carries your mark." Sephiroth spoke casually, but his eyes never left Black.

"I have taught her nothing. All that she knows, she has learned entirely on her own." Black's head inclined toward her slightly, and the ghost of a smile flashed across his grim face. "She's had to work for her abilities... unlike you."

Sephiroth's placid expression melted into a scowl, and finally he looked away from Black. Noin felt the hair on her arms rise as his eyes flicked over her from head to foot. An instant later, a sinister smile replaced the frown, and he half-turned his head to address his comrades.

"A slight change in plan, gentlemen," Sephiroth purred. "Disregard the Item for now. We're taking a different prize." His unnatural aqua eyes snapped back to Noin, and the cold dread gripped her again. What did he want with her?

Without warning, Black lunged at Sephiroth, snarling like some fictive beast. Noin felt the tendrils of force as Sephiroth lashed out at him, and for an instant her vision blurred as the crackling of invisible power filled the hallway. She recoiled and blinked, her eyes opening to the sight of Sephiroth's two lieutenants charging toward her. The first had regained his katana; the second came at her barehanded, though there was a weapon still sheathed across his back.

Years of OZ training pulled at her body, and Noin surrendered to the military instinct. She dropped into a balanced crouch, aiming up under the guard of her nearest enemy. Two of her bullets caught Vicious across the chest and shoulder, and he staggered back with a grunt. The taller assailant dodged behind his associate, then dove at her from the left. Noin spun on the ball of her foot and kicked out at the side of his knee. The sudden movement checked his forward charge, but he narrowly evaded the kick and turned to come at her again.

For an instant, Noin stood in motionless defense between her enemies. She hesitated, unsure of her next action. The wounded Vicious should be less of a threat, but there was still three feet of sharp Japanese steel in his hand. The one in the orange suit was much stronger, and certainly faster, but was unarmed. She glanced from one to the other, waiting for an indication. A breath later, Vicious lunged at her, swinging wildly. The angle of his attack was low, and Noin had no room to dodge. She caught the blade with her gun, the force of the blow jarring her arms even though she knew he could use only a fraction of his strength. The gun screeched along the edge of the blade, and one wild shot crashed into the floor. They grappled for a moment, until at last she pushed the weapon away from her body and twisted the hilt out of his grasp. She struck him in the solar plexus as the sword clattered to the floor, then followed with a strike to the throat.

Too late, she remembered the second adversary, and turned to face him just as his blow fell across her temple. Colors flashed in the wake of a brilliant pain, and Noin crumpled to the floor.

- - -

Black suddenly halted his attack and turned to look back at the fallen Director. Enishi rubbed his knuckles briefly, then reached down to swing Noin's limp body up and over his shoulder. With his other arm, he half-lifted the wounded Vicious and supported him as they returned to Sephiroth's side. Black turned back to Sephiroth, taut with white anger. Sephiroth looked at his blanched face and laughed soundlessly.

"Come, now, don't be like this," Sephiroth admonished, holding Black's blood-red eyes with his own aquamarine ones. "You are so very predictable," he murmured. "No sport at all." He half-turned to address the boy crouched down the hallway. "Dilandau, are you nearly finished?"

By way of an answer, the gangly teenager left the box he'd been toying with and danced back to his master's side, giggling. Sephiroth nodded approvingly and glanced over his group like a school teacher at the end of a field trip. "I believe that takes care of our business here, for the moment," he asserted. He leveled his eyes on Black again. "I do hope you enjoy the parting gift," he purred.

Black's tight jaw barely moved. "Return her," he growled.

Sephiroth blinked, looking genuinely surprised. Then he smiled. "I think not," he replied. "I won't relinquish my bargaining chip just yet. Though I am amused that you, of all people, would actually ask." The air around the group was beginning to shimmer slightly. Sephiroth cast one last look around the ruined hallway, then turned back to Black with a sneer. "You know how I adore our little chats, dear, but I'm afraid we must beg your leave..."

Black uttered an inarticulate cry and lunged forward. Sephiroth raised his hand and responded with a blast of searing power that sent Black into the opposite wall, his clothing smoldering. Before he'd landed solidly on the floor, Sephiroth and his group had vanished.


	7. Chapter VI: Needles And Pins

CHAPTER VI

"Then It Begins... Needles and Pins" -- The Searchers

It was Steed's voice that jolted Amon back to his senses. The latter had been standing in the ruined hallway, surveying the damage without really absorbing what he was seeing. Noin had been taken. One of their own Directors, kidnapped right out of headquarters, and they'd failed to protect her. Black was crumpled against a wall beneath a scorched and broken hole approximately the size of his body; bullet holes, scorch marks and debris littered the hallway.

"Get that bomb squad in here _now!_" Steed ordered. Amon jerked out of his dark reverie, watching the senior Director issue commands as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Only a crease between Steed's eyebrows and the abnormally thin line of his mouth betrayed the severity of the situation.

A moment later a group of select agents arrived, wearing insignia on metal plates tied across their foreheads. They gathered around the suspicious box on the floor. Dilandau had left them another explosive present, as he had two months before. The fire from the previous detonation had destroyed an entire wing of the building and devoured most of their manpower and resources for the past eight weeks. They couldn't take that risk again.

Steed had been directing during that travesty. Now, as then, Amon let his senior officer take control of the situation. In some ways, Amon was glad to be relieved of command. It was so much easier to simply follow orders, to be spared from bearing the weight of critical decisions. But until he had specific instructions from Steed, there was little for him to do. Amon chafed for something to occupy him, to keep his mind off of what he had let happen here. He planted his will firmly against the thought, but it kept coming back to nag at him: _First Alfred, and now Noin..._

The casualties, mercifully, had been light this time. Despite the damage to the building, there had been very few injuries. Only Black appeared seriously affected. Of course, there was no knowing what hurt Noin had sustained, or what would happen to her. Amon ground his teeth, feeling angry and frustrated and helpless. He stepped over to Black's crumpled form, more out of restlessness than from a real concern for Black's safety. As far as Amon's experience went, Black was nearly invincible.

Black's breathing was shallow, his eyes lightly closed as if he were just resting, but his body was motionless. Amon knelt beside him, beginning to worry that the Arcane Specialist was seriously injured, but as he reached for Black's scorched shoulder the dark-fringed eyes flicked open. Black's luminous red gaze turned to Amon, but the pale, mask-like face did not change.

"You must go after her," Black rasped, his voice low. "If you do it quickly, you can track him through the void."

Amon blinked in surprise. "I don't understand. What do you mean, track him?"

Black lifted his head a fraction. "When he phases, he creates a power trace, in the same way that the portals shed photons and leave behind a brief light trail. He can't cloak it when he's traveling with so many, and Lucrezia's track is especially strong. You may be able to isolate it through the portal system, but you must hurry. It will fade after a few minutes, and if we lose it, we'll have no idea where he's taken her."

Most of this technical detail went over Amon's head, but he groped after the idea. "You can sense this, can't you? Couldn't you follow him?"

Black's head dropped again, and his expression shifted subtly. He looked as if he were in pain, though Amon doubted that it was entirely physical. "I was careless," he said flatly. "I must recover some of my strength first. By then, it will be too late."

Amon rose slowly and scanned the room for operatives. He didn't understand everything that Black was saying -- he hadn't known that their portals left any sort of trace, much less a trail of photons -- but if there was a chance of finding Noin, they had to take it. His mind ticked furiously through the catalogue of the Society's most technology-savvy operatives. They would need someone who was not only capable of isolating Sephiroth's trail, but also altering the portal system to track it. He wheeled into the gathering crowd of personnel, catching Priss by the arm.

"I want you to find Bob and Illya and meet me at Transport as soon as possible," he told her. "I don't have time to explain," he added, in response to her blank look. "But you must hurry. There's a chance we can follow them."

Priss's eyes widened, but she nodded dutifully and dashed off in the direction of the Engineering quad. After giving Wilmer orders to collect weapons and meet him at the same destination, Amon turned back to where he'd left Black. He was certain that he'd have to help the injured operative to the portal room, but by the time he'd returned to the blasted wall, the Arcane Specialist was nowhere to be seen.

- - -

When Amon reached the Transportal room, Black was already at the control panel, instructing Bob and Illya in how to track Sephiroth. He looked a little better than he had when Amon had left him in the hallway, although his clothing was singed and dusted with bits of wallboard and there were still pronounced burn marks on his face. As Amon approached, he noticed that Black had added a strange accessory to his eclectic costume. On a ribbon around his throat hung a tiny bell, of the size and shape that someone might tie on a cat's collar. Amon shrugged at this – he'd already written Black off as brilliant but eccentric – and turned to Priss.

"How are the arrangements coming?" he asked, not wanting to interrupt Black's instruction.

Priss shrugged and gestured to the control panel. "They seem to be rerouting the system now, although I don't have a clue what any of the jargon means." They both glanced toward the door as Wilmer entered with an armload of assorted guns and ammunition, and for a few minutes Amon busied himself with selecting weapons for himself and Wilmer.

Finally, Black turned to face them. When he moved, there was a soft jingling sound. "The system is ready," Black told Amon, his voice strained. Despite the improvement in his appearance, Amon realized, he must still be feeling the effects of Sephiroth's attack. "We've lost too much of the trail to mark the complete route, but we've tracked it to his first destination. I doubt he will still be there by the time you arrive, but perhaps you can find some indication of where he is headed."

Amon checked the clip in his weapon – it still felt too light, even though it had been ages since he'd last held an Orbo gun – and stepped up to the portal. Wilmer followed him.

Priss swallowed the fear in her throat. "Good luck," she murmured. Amon nodded, and the two of them disappeared into the block of light.

Priss dragged another chair over to the control panel and dropped into it. "Bring it up on the monitor," she told Bob. "I want to see what's happening."

"You got it," Bob answered, adjusting a few controls. A moment later, a screen winked to life with a burst of colorful static. There was a faint bell-jingle beside Priss as Black leaned over Bob's shoulder to look at the monitor. The image was faint and indistinct, but after squinting for a moment, Priss could nearly make out the shapes...

"Are those frogs playing guitar?" Bob blurted in disbelief.

Priss stared at the screen a moment longer, and nodded slowly. "Yes," she replied, "I think they are. And those bears have something in their hands – maracas, I think."

Bob plugged in a headset, and after a moment began bobbing his head rhythmically. "Music's catchy," he said with a grin.

"It looks as though that cactus is wearing a sombrero," Illya added soberly. "Such an odd world. Why would anyone want to go there deliberately?"

Bob pointed at a pair of darker shapes. "There's the Third and Wilmer," he said. "I don't see anyone else, though, except for those dancing animals." He squinted and tapped at another blob on the monitor. "Hey, there's a little baby cactus behind the big one with the hat. It kind of looks like he's dancing, doesn't it?"

Black's eyes went wide, and he leaned forward suddenly. "Call them back," he ordered urgently. "That is no ordinary cactus. They must return immediately!"

Bob scrambled to send the message, but on the monitor, they could already see Wilmer approaching the little green shape. Black cringed and stood back, shaking his head slowly. The bell tinkled with the motion.

Priss eyed him curiously. "It doesn't look that threatening. Is it really so dangerous that we need to call off the search for Noin?"

Black's dark gaze flicked briefly toward her, then back to the monitor. "They will not find Lucrezia there," he said after a pause. "Even Sephiroth wouldn't stay in a place inhabited by a Cactuar. He must have expected that we would follow him."

In the hall before them, a portal opened. An instant later, the Third Director stumbled out of the square of light, doubled over in a posture of pain. Wilmer sagged at his side, supported only by Amon's grip on his collar. Bob lunged out of his chair to help them as Illya closed the portal.

"But I have to admit," Black continued, his voice pitched so low that Priss barely heard him, "he has a wicked sense of irony."

- - -

Noin opened her eyes to neutral.

The floor, against which her cheek lay, was an indistinct grey. The walls were something approximating taupe. The ceiling, she discovered when she summoned the strength to tip her head back, was a bland off-white. The plumbing fixtures on the opposite wall were a pale cream.

_This must be a torture cell,_ she thought bitterly. _There is no other reason in the universe for this combination of non-colors to exist._

She temporarily alleviated the aesthetic discomfort by closing her eyes, but she knew that she could spare only a moment. She had no idea how much time had passed since Sephiroth's goon had knocked her out, or where she had been taken afterward. She concluded that she was a prisoner, because to her recollection there was no room with quite this hideous a paint selection in the entirety of SPCFC headquarters.

She pushed her body slowly into a more upright position, rubbing her bruised temple gingerly, and forced herself to examine the room more carefully. There was not much to see; the cell was not large, perhaps twice as long as she was tall, and was almost entirely featureless. The walls were plain, save for the sink and toilet along one side, and a closed door on the other.

Noin squinted dubiously at the sanitary fixtures. Now that she looked more closely, the sink was nearly eggshell in color, while the toilet was more of a speckled ecru...

Noin nearly slapped her own cheek when she caught herself comparing shades of unwhite. To break that line of thought, she rolled unsteadily to her feet and lurched toward the door. There was really no reason to check it – she knew it would be locked – but there was always the hope, no matter how faint, that she'd been entrusted to an incompetent guard.

The door, she discovered, was very solid, and apparently well bolted in place from the outside. If she pressed her ear against it, she could just hear the patter of conversational voices on the other side...

_What do you suppose this Item is, that _nuestro patrón _desires it so greatly?_

_Personally_, added another voice, _I'm more interested to know what's so hot about this chick we've snatched. One look at her, and he drops the whole Item plan like an empty cartridge._

_It is not our place to question the master's orders_, came a stern reprimand.

_Now, now, there's no harm in speculating_, another voice interjected. _Of course we're not questioning his orders_. _By the way, have you been in the lounge today?_

The voices moved on to discussing something else – furniture design? – and gave her no further clues. Unlike most scenarios she would have hoped for, her captors seemed to be having a passably intellectual conversation, and it didn't seem likely that someone of Sephiroth's caliber would employ complete idiots to guard his prisoners.

Noin hobbled to the opposite wall, still dizzy from the blow to the head, and hung over the almost-eggshell sink to splash water on her face and neck. She watched the water swirling down the drain – counter-clockwise, she noted absently, though it did her little good to know which hemisphere she was in when she couldn't even identify what dimension she had been dragged to – and cupped cool water in her hands to ease the throbbing bruise at her temple.

She tipped her head forward against the cold enamel, feeling tension sear the back of her neck. She ached from more than just the blow to the head, she realized. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had discovered her mysterious sixth sense, but the pain and disorientation she felt now were no different than the very first time she'd tried to use the strange power.

Noin straightened and propped one shoulder against the wall, thinking back to the day she'd met Steed. He had arrived quite literally out of thin air to pull her from the catastrophic destruction of her home world. That same day, she had learned of her latent abilities and used them to save dozens – perhaps hundreds – of people from the cataclysm. However, when Steed pressed her to use her powers again, she had collapsed.

Steed had attributed her breakdown to the intense mental strain of using her new ability, but Noin knew that it had more to do with what she later learned to call interphase space – the black void that had gnawed the only world she'd known until there was only _nothing_. While searching for survivors, she had reached out and touched the blackness, and it had sheared away her consciousness.

She'd awakened, hours or days later, to find herself in Steed's office, Zechs and Relena missing, her entire world gone, and the memory of the darkness still fresh and terrifying. Even now, she shied away from the memory as if the blackness might engulf her once again.

Belatedly, Noin began to wonder if it were her own fear of the void that had suppressed the mysterious ability for so long. Perhaps if she could overcome her horror of that black emptiness and reach out again, she might be able to learn where she was. Swallowing the lump of fear that lodged in her throat, she closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the wall, stretching out with her senses...

She felt nothing, except for a more acute throbbing in her bruised temple. Noin sighed in defeat, not bothering to open her eyes, and abandoned the futile effort.

In an attempt to escape the bleak neutrality of her cell, she let her mind drift back to the comforting familiarity of her own headquarters. She pictured her office: Her chair, kicked well back from the desk; the nameplate she'd demanded from Steed; the ever-present pile of paperwork; the drawer holding the crumpled photo wallet, salvaged from Relena's purse, that held the only extant picture of her long-lost partner... _Zechs,_ she whispered to the room in her thoughts, _where are you?_ She thought of the creased, faded photograph, and unconsciously reached out for the image she had built in her mind.

Some hidden sense gave warning just as the breath of the void touched her. Noin felt her body pulling apart as the view of interphase space opened before her. Panic overwhelmed her, and she recoiled from the blackness. The cell reappeared around her with jarring corporeality, and Noin reeled back against the wall, striking her head again. Nausea seized her and she fell against the sink, retching, until she was driven to her knees by pain and faintness. Sweat ran down her body, plastering her clothing and hair to her skin, and she shook convulsively.

She huddled against the wall, unable to stop quaking, for what seemed hours. She saw nothing, heard nothing except her own ragged breathing. The terror of the void had so incapacitated her that she did not even notice the sound of the latch as the door of her cell opened.

- - -

Amon cringed as Mireille gingerly plucked another barb from his shoulder. "Nine hundred ninety-eight," she said, dropping the needle into a tray with hundreds of others. "Nine hundred ninety-nine. Hold still, I'm almost done."

Priss was regarding him curiously across the conference table. Amon couldn't decide if she were simply concerned about their situation, or if she were resisting the urge to laugh at his impression of a pincushion.

Behind her, the door whisked open to admit Doujima and Illya, arms laden with folders and printouts. Doujima stopped so quickly in the doorway that Illya bumped into her and dropped a thick sheaf of papers. She gaped openly at the sight of the Third Director, his torso bare except for a liquid-filled amulet around his neck, skin speckled with hundreds of tiny blood-dots where needles had already been removed.

Doujima, predictably, had no compunctions about laughing at Amon's predicament. Illya muttered something unflattering in Russian and stooped to collect his fallen documents.

"What happened to you?" Doujima asked, when she had stopped sniggering long enough to speak. "Offend a porcupine? Illya told me you went after Noin."

Amon barely flinched as Mireille tugged the thousandth needle from his back. "I did," he growled through clenched teeth. "Or at least, I thought I did. Apparently following her vapor trail or whatever isn't as simple as Black would have us believe."

Illya was beginning to spread his papers over the conference table. "It's an electron trail," he mumbled absently. "Rather, a path of energy dispelled from displaced electrons returning to their proper orbits, like what happens when you quickly open the wrapper of an adhesive bandage or bite into certain kinds of candy in the dark." He tapped the picture of a rainbow-colored splotch. "His signature is easy to identify, as it somewhat resembles the spectrograph of radioactive carrot juice." Illya frowned in concentration. "I was sure I had the right one. Unless he doubled back..."

There was a pause as every operative in the room turned to stare blankly at Illya. Even Mireille stopped daubing antiseptic on Amon's back long enough to give him a confused look. After a moment of silence, the blond man glanced up.

"The Aurora Borealis," Illya said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe, and returned to his papers.

Amon digested this, then stood and moved his arms tentatively. "How is Wilmer doing?" he asked, turning his attention back to Doujima. "He was in worse shape than I was when we returned."

Doujima shrugged. "They say he'll live, as usual, though he'll likely have a few more scars to sulk about. He was hit in a couple of vital areas, so he'll probably be out of commission for a while. Mr. Steed said that he might need a specialist; I think he was going to retrieve Juubei for him." She sidestepped the brooding Illya and slumped into a chair. The day's events were starting to take their toll even on the irrepressible Doujima, Amon noted, and he forgave her a couple of degrees for laughing at him. "So, tell me," she asked, eyeing the medical kit on the table, "what exactly happened in there? Did you aggravate a raging acupuncturist?"

Amon's expression darkened even more, and he mentally withdrew his forgiveness. He reached for his shirt, avoiding her question. "Where is Black? I want to talk to him right away."

There was a long pause, punctuated only by the rustling of Illya's papers. Finally, Priss cleared her throat. "He's disappeared again," she said quietly. "Probably to recuperate. No one saw him leave, but it seems he was hurt pretty badly in the fight. I suppose he's off trying to heal the injuries from that blast."

Amon said nothing, but his fingers tightened on his shirt until the fabric was crushed in his fists. The needle wounds burned with the pressure, chastising him for his uselessness. He had failed to protect his fellow Director, allowed his operatives to be injured, and missed his only chance to catch up with their elusive target. And now, the only person with any insight into their situation had slipped back into the shadows, unable or unwilling to advise them.

Anger and frustration battered at his defenses, and he scrabbled for control of his emotions. His dark memories gnawed at him, warning him to retreat before something disastrous happened, and he felt his practiced restraint crumbling. This was too much like the last time...

Slowly and deliberately, Amon bundled his jacket and the rest of his effects under one arm. It would do no good to lose control here, in front of the others. "I need to discuss our plan of action with Steed," he improvised, stepping around Doujima's chair and making for the door.

He pushed quickly out of the room, but not before he saw Doujima's eyes turn knowingly toward the pendant on his chest.


	8. Chapter VII: Escape

CHAPTER VII

"Escape" -- Rupert Holmes

Sephiroth stood before her, his presence overwhelming in the confined space of the cell. His brilliant turquoise eyes examined Noin's crouching figure with what might have been curiosity, taking in her rumpled clothing, sweat-dampened hair and pallid face.

"I'm disappointed, little sister," her silver-haired captor chuckled after a moment. "I rather thought that someone of your position and status would hold up better under pressure."

Noin, all too conscious of her disheveled appearance and resenting the familiar diminutive, glared at him silently. She wasn't presenting the image of a worthy adversary, and it galled her. At best, she reasoned, it might make her enemy underestimate her -- though it seemed he wasn't taking any chances.

"I'm a little claustrophobic," she lied. She sat upright and tried not to look pathetic.

A moment of silence passed between them. Sephiroth tilted his head thoughtfully, as if listening to something far away, but his eyes never left hers. Noin felt a brush at the back of her mind, an unpleasant shadow like a forgotten errand. It tugged at her thoughts, threatening to break her concentration. She pushed the presence out of her mind and focused her gaze on her enemy's eyes, the aqua globes that bored into hers with an icy gleam. _Go away,_ she thought, preferring the miserable solitude of her cell to this intimidation contest. _Leave me alone._

Sephiroth frowned.

The turbulence in her mind rose to an irritating pitch, a frenzied tickle that made her want to rub her eyes and scratch her ears, but she stared back at him until her eyes began to water, refusing to succumb to the static crackle. A moment later, it was gone, as suddenly as it had begun. Noin blinked a few times, searching her thoughts experimentally, but everything seemed normal...

Sephiroth's countenance had darkened into something that was not quite anger, and now he turned his back on her. "You would do best to cooperate," he said, his words clipped. "And I expect that your friends will do the same, given a choice between your life and the Item." He waited an instant longer, as if he wished to say something else, but then swept out the door without looking back at her.

Noin sagged with relief and exhaustion as the door clicked shut behind him. She could hear the scrape of the heavy bolt as the guard locked her cell. As expected, it sounded more than secure, and she knew that even if she managed to get past the lock she was in no condition to face Sephiroth's guards.

But at least he was gone, for the moment, and had left her in relative peace. She wasn't certain what exactly had transpired between them, but the battle of wills had drained her completely. She leaned back against the wall, struggling to keep her eyes open...

Suddenly she recalled Sephiroth's last words, and she bolted upright, fully awake. As much as she craved it, rest was not an option right now. She was completely in Sephiroth's power, a hostage to be used against her comrades. She would be bartered back to her friends in exchange for... for what? He had called it "the Item," but that was as generic a term as she could think of for anything with which a character might interact. Whatever it was, it was apparently stored at SPCFC headquarters, judging by the comments she'd heard earlier. Sephiroth seemed to have staged the raid simply to gain access to the Item, until he had seen her and changed his plan. The Item must be extremely valuable for him to take that kind of risk.

What Sephiroth valued most, Noin was certain, was power. Whatever the Item was, it must be some thing or artifact that would grant Sephiroth incredible, perhaps ultimate, power.

She stared at the blank wall of her cell, considering her options. If she remained here and did nothing, Sephiroth would almost certainly trade her for this object he wanted. Steed was dedicated to his job, she knew; but he was also responsible, perhaps to a fault, to the people who made up his organization. Noin doubted he'd sacrifice one of his compatriots, and she wasn't sure if Steed and Amon would be able to trick Sephiroth into giving her back in exchange for anything less than the genuine Item.

She could try to make a deal with Sephiroth to spare her, in exchange for... what? She had nothing of more value than the Item itself to offer him, and she didn't dare promise him something she couldn't even identify. Additionally, Sephiroth wasn't likely to trust her, especially if she showed a sudden change of heart.

Another option was to kill herself here, thus eliminating Sephiroth's bargaining chip. But Steed and Amon wouldn't know that she was dead; Sephiroth could pretend to have her in custody, and still arrange to trade her for the Item. Truth be told, suicide wasn't high on her list of favorite emergency measures, either.

The only other alternative she could see was to escape and get word to headquarters before Sephiroth could make his bid. From the look and sound of the door, that wouldn't be easy. Noin glanced around the room, her tactician's eyes taking stock of every detail. Closed ventilation system; no external light sources. Small openings for plumbing, but nothing big enough to crawl or reach through. Solid walls and ceiling, and no tools to break through them. A heavy, locked door with an external bolt. A guard, just audible in the hall, who would hear if she tried to work on the lock. There was no way, short of a natural disaster, that she was going to walk out of this cell.

Assuming she walked.

Noin hesitated, hardly daring to consider the other possibility. A few moments before, she had felt herself _go_ – she hadn't moved, but she knew somehow that she had broken her connection to the world she was in. But along with that feeling of freedom she had felt the silent threat in her mind, the distinct signature of the void.

Even now, terror of the black nothingness nearly paralyzed her. The rational part of her mind screamed facts to dissuade her: The void was, truly, nothing; it was the eternal emptiness that lay outside the habitable bubbles of the known worlds. Even outer space, vacuum though it was, contained planets and stars and the potential for life; the void held only death. In theory, it was impossible to traverse the void without the precise technology they used to navigate and control the portal system.

And yet, Sephiroth was able to move about freely, though he had no visible means of transport. And she'd long known that Black had the ability to phase from world to world without their portals. Was it possible, then, to travel _through the void itself?_

Noin took a shaky breath, consciously steadying herself. One way or another, she had to escape. She was not going to let Sephiroth use her against her own comrades. If she succeeded in escaping – which, she had to admit, seemed unlikely at best – at least she would be somewhere else, beyond Sephiroth's reach, and could potentially get a message to headquarters to that effect. If she failed, she would be no worse off than she was now.

And, in the worst case, she could only die – which would have been her last resort anyway. Noin's lips curved in a wry smile, and she settled herself more comfortably against the wall. There was really nothing to lose.

She cleared her thoughts, picturing headquarters in her mind. Fear drilled at her attention from every side, but she held on to the image, _willing_ herself to be there. She passed through the prickling touch of the layers she'd felt before, and then more – sharp pain, burning heat, freezing cold – but she kept focusing on the picture in her mind, willing herself more and more to stand there with her own feet on the floor and the familiar walls around her. Her heartbeat slowed... then it seemed to echo... then she lost it all together. There was a strange white numbness that started at the extremities and crept over all of her, at last sweeping through her mind, washing out the fear, and with her mind still fixed on headquarters she succumbed to it...

Gradually she felt her body coming back together, a painful needling sensation after the nothingness. Before her the glare flattened into sterile white walls, and she once again _felt_ – first, pressure beneath her knees as the floor materialized, then against her hands as she caught her weight on them. It was strange to feel heavy again, after being so weightless...

Her stomach heaved again, but she was too drained to be sick. Dimly, she registered someone calling to her, but it seemed so far away... She tipped forward, face against the cool floor, and let the faint sound of footsteps and raised voices carry her beyond consciousness.

- - -

The holding room was empty. Sephiroth stood in the doorway, gazing at the uninhabited cell with a peculiar stoicism. His lieutenants gathered behind him, cautious, but peering over his shoulder with anxious curiosity. Vanduri, who had been placed in charge of guarding the prisoner, trembled against the wall like an albino rat in the den of the Midgardsörmer. The captured Director of the SPCFC, their precious hostage, had escaped.

There was silence for several minutes. No one dared speak to ask what had happened.

Finally, Sephiroth seemed to finish his meditation, and he broke the stillness with a chuckle. "_Sasuga da na, imouto yo_," they heard him murmur as he turned away.

Desoto, leaning against the doorframe, sighed audibly as their leader strode down the hallway. "He's doing that again, leaving us out. _Oye, señor_." He glared at the tall, lean Japanese man across the hall. "_Entiende, ¿no?_ You understand that language. Did he say anything important?"

Enishi, staring after Sephiroth with a look of wonder, didn't answer.


	9. Epilogue: Still Alive

EPILOGUE

"Still Alive" -- Jonathan Coulton

Steed sat at his desk, hands folded serenely on the blotter before him. The desktop was cluttered with stacks of files, hastily scrawled notes, an abandoned tea tray and a bank of electronic gadgets that tied the First Director's office to the SPCFC's main computer system.

But Steed saw none of these. Instead, his gaze rested on the antique-looking rotary telephone that stood at one corner of the desk.

He wasn't sure what unnerved him about picking up the receiver. He knew that the events of the past twenty-four hours more than justified his making a report and a request for assistance, but still he hesitated to initiate contact with the Higher Authority.

With a sigh, Steed forced his eyes back to the notepad that lay before him. He reached for a slightly stale biscuit from the tea tray and nibbled at it distastefully as he reviewed the points he'd collected for the report he knew he had to make. He dragged his pen through several items that had seemed relevant earlier, but had been overshadowed by subsequent events. Steed dutifully annotated the account of Sephiroth's abduction of the Second Director with a few details, but he suspected that his superior would be more interested in Noin's mysterious return to headquarters. Not a single member of the command nor operations team had been able to conceive a plausible explanation for her sudden reappearance, and Noin herself had been too stunned and physically unwell to answer their questions.

Steed had his own theory, which he had not shared with the others. Apart from Noin herself, only Steed and the Higher Authority knew the details of the mysterious abilities she had shown during the exodus of her home world. Noin had largely dismissed the phenomenon and tucked it away into a part of memory reserved for nonsensical dreams, but Steed and the H. A. had taken it far more seriously.

Steed had never told Noin that the reason she had been recruited and offered the Directorship had less to do with her tactical and command experience than with the hazy ability to find missing persons that she had displayed then... and yet, he never would have imagined that Noin would find a way to return on her own. Noin and her "powers" were still very much a mystery.

With a determined flourish, Steed finished his notes and deposited his pen on the blotter. He straightened in his chair and took a bitter sip of tepid tea to rinse the dry biscuit crumbs from his throat. At last, when there was nothing else he could do to procrastinate, he reached for the rotary telephone and dialed.

There was a gap at the base of the door where light from the hallway crept into the office. She could see, stretched along the polished floor, the long shadows of Amon's steps as he paced restlessly outside the door like a military guard. She was grateful for his vigilance, but she knew that sooner or later he would put his questions to her, just like all the rest, and she would have no answers for him.

- - -

Noin shivered and curled into a tighter ball. Under Amon's heavy black coat – he had draped it over her for a blanket after he'd carried her here – she was sweltering, but the heat could not stop her trembling.

They would want to know how she had done it. Amon and Steed would expect her to tell them that much, at least. How had she returned without a portal? Could she do it again? Could she convey someone else alongside her? Noin couldn't imagine what she would tell them, when she didn't even know the answers herself.

Slowly, Noin pushed back the coat and swung her feet to the floor. There was only one person who could answer the questions about her powers, and Sephiroth's.

Somehow, she had to find Black.


End file.
